A preliminary evaluation found that a more thorough investigation is required; therefore, the Air Force is widening its investigation into whether military members who worked with nuclear weapons had exceptionally high incidences of cancer.
Reports that a large number of veterans were now ill prompted the initial study’s inception. The Air Force revealed its preliminary assessment on Monday, stating that additional examination is required, but it won’t make its early conclusions about cancer statistics public for around a month.
One of many Air Force medical officers who provided reporters with an update on the service’s missile community cancer review, Lt. Col. Keith Beam, stated, “We’ve determined that additional study is warranted” based on preliminary analysis of the data.
The results are a part of a comprehensive investigation that the Air Force conducted earlier this year to find out if launch officers, or missileers, who operated the country’s nuclear missiles launched from silos underground, were exposed to dangerous substances. Numerous of those present or former missile launch officers came forward this year to disclose their cancer diagnoses, which prompted the review to start.
As a result, medical teams deployed to each of the three nuclear missile bases—Malmstrom Air Force installation in Montana, Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, and F.E. Foster—to perform thousands of tests on the air, water, soil, and surface regions within and surrounding each installation. The Wyoming Air Force Base, Warren.
The whole missile community, including all those who supported the ICBM mission, will be examined in the comprehensive Air Force inquiry, not just the missileers.
During a press briefing on Friday, the Air Force revealed that none of the almost 2,000 tests taken from the air, water, and soil at the sites in Wyoming or Montana revealed dangerous levels of pollution. Nevertheless, there were dangerously high PCB levels in four of the missileers’ underground launch control capsule positions. The North Dakota base’s results are still pending for the service.
The Environmental Protection Agency has classified PCBs—oily, waxy substances—as probable carcinogens.
Although the evidence indicates that the air, water, and soil are safe at this time, it still begs the question of what previous missile launch commanders might have inhaled or been exposed to. A large portion of the infrastructure surrounding the silos and subterranean control capsules was constructed in the 1960s and hasn’t been modified since.
The commander of the United States Military, Col. Tory Woodard, stated, “We can’t go back and test to fully quantify what was there in the ’90s or 2000s, or even the ’50s and ’60s.” Aerospace Medicine School, Air Force. “However, we can use this data to help us determine what those potential risks were.”
According to Woodard, the Air Force will be able to “build a risk profile of what past members may have been exposed to” with the assistance of sampling and additional data evaluation.
In an effort to account for as many service members as possible, the Air Force is broadening the scope of its assessment of medical data to assist with that. The DOD started using electronic medical records in 2001, which is the only year covered by the original dataset. However, they intend to incorporate Department of Veterans Affairs data and state cancer registries, as well as any workers who have worked with military nuclear missiles since 1976.
As a result of the restrictions found in the first dataset, the Air Force released a statement saying, “We are opening the aperture to ensure that we are capturing as many cases as possible, particularly among those who previously served in missile-related career fields.”
The study’s overall goal is to gather information on every member of the missile community who served between 1976 and 2010.
When previous generations of missile launch officers voiced concerns about illnesses within their community, the Air Force’s approach was very different. In many Air Force evaluations over the years, the missileers were informed that there was no reason for alarm.
However, this year, a large number of current or former officers, as well as the surviving members of their families, banded together and disclosed self-reported information about their cancers, which dramatically increased public awareness of the matter. Specifically, 41 of those launch officers self-reported having been diagnosed with the blood malignancy non-Hodgkin lymphoma. In an effort to raise awareness of the problem, those families founded the Torchlight Initiative.
The Air Force inquiry is looking at a wider range of cancers, but because there are so few missile launch officers in the community, the number of self-reported NHL cases is startling. The National Cancer Institute states that there are 18.7 cases of NHL for every 100,000 individuals nationwide.
The Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs are changing their ways to more aggressively address the problem of exposure to hazardous substances, including radiation or airborne particulates, in military jobs. This includes the Air Force, which has increased its reaction.
To drive further action on military cancer clusters, it frequently still takes a grassroots effort, such as that of the Torchlight Initiative, veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who inhaled toxic fumes from trash-burning pits on base, or individual pilots drawing attention to numbers of sickened aviators who all flew the same airframe, like the Navy’s E-2 Hawkeye radar plane.
The fact that many of those diagnosed officers are still serving and that many of the officers commanding the missile community now have linkages to former missileers who have been diagnosed with cancer or have passed away from it is perhaps the biggest departure from years ago in the Air Force’s missileer community.
“There is a lot of empathy and a lot of desire to understand better,” stated Col. Barry Little, commander of the 341st Missile Wing at Malmstrom Air Force Base, “because I personally know a number of the folks who are non-Hodgkin lymphoma survivors.” “We’re not skipping any steps.”
